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An Ordinance Against Images in Jerusalem, A.D. 66

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Cecil Roth
Cecil Roth
Affiliation:
Oxford University
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Extract

The problem of the attitude of Judaism towards art and images, at the beginning of the Christian era, has again come to the forefront of scholarly enquiry as a result of the publication of the first volumes of E. R. Goodenough's monumental work, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (vols. 1–3, New York 1953; vol. 4, New York 1954). In these learned pages, every particle of evidence bearing on the subject is carefully considered, and the author emphatically confirms as fundamental to his main thesis the accepted view: that at least up to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, there was a completely effective Rabbinic ban on any sort of iconographic representation for whatever purpose. (His striking conclusions with regard to the later period need not concern us here.) In this article, I would like to reconsider this matter from a slightly different point of view. I propose in it, however, to adopt a criterion which is nowadays becoming somewhat unusual: not only to confine myself to strictly contemporary testimony, but moreover to assume that the contemporaries meant exactly what they said.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , July 1956 , pp. 169 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1956

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References

1 The non-Rabbinic evidence has been assembled by Frey, J. B., La question des images chez les juifs, in BIBLICA, xv (1934) 265–300Google Scholar: there is no need for me therefore to recapitulate it. It is also considered minutely by Goodenough in his Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, referred to in the text: cf. now also Cohen, Boaz, Art in Jewish Law, in JUDAISM, iii. (1954) 165–176Google Scholar.

2 Josephus, Wars, ii. 169–174: Antiquities, xviii. 55–59. No doubt the Jewish opposition was intensified by the ‘loyal’ obligation to show respect to the Imperial symbol.

3 Antiquities, xv. 267 ff.

4 Reifenberg, A., Portrait Coins of the Herodian Kings, in NUMISMATIC CIRCULAR, 1935: Ancient Jewish Coins (2nd ed., Jerusalem 1947), pp. 20–21Google Scholar.

5 ‘Jerusalem’ Talmud, Aboda Zara, 42c, and Megilla, 72b: cf. Loewe, H. M. J., Render Unto Caesar (Cambridge 1940) pp. 87–88Google Scholar, and Bevan, E., Holy Images (London 1940) pp. 60–61Google Scholar.

6 TJ Aboda Zara, loc. cit.

7 Ibid.

8 His attitude is closely examined by Goodenough, E. R. in By Light, Light (New Haven 1935) pp. 256–259Google Scholar.

9 By the editors of the Loeb Classics edition, ii. 504, and Goodenough, op. dt. pp. 256–259.

10 Goodenough, ibid.

11 Mishnah, Sabbath i. 4 (and Tosefta, ibid., i. 15) with the corresponding passages in the Gemara (TB Sabbath 13b–14a, 15a–b, 17a, and TJ Sabbath f. 3c: also TB Aboda Zara 36a): the ultimate authority is as it happens R. Simeon b. Johai, father of the R. Lazar b. Simeon mentioned above.

12 The question of the ‘eighteen ordinances’ and their date is minutely considered by H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, iii. note 26 and subsequently from differing points of view by Z. Frankel. I. H. Weiss, I. Halevy, Z. Javitz, and most recently J. Klausner (all in Hebrew): cf. also G. Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, i. 81, and Encyclopaedia Judaica, i. 741–746. Graetz identifies the Inspirer of the code with the Revolutionary leader Eleazar.

13 It appears to me conceivable that these regulations may all be attributable to the same occasion, in the year 66, to which I refer. I imagine that it would be fanciful to suggest that the reference to a ban on ציר (= brine) may be a corruption of ציזר (= figure): or to draw wider implications from the strange statement (TB Sabbath 17a) that the controversy which raged concerning this legislation was as disastrous as the making of the Golden Calf in the Wilderness.